To HD or not to HD...

I deliver in SD (DVD) all the time and shoot in HDV. There are more pixels to work with, and I can do "artificial" zooming and pans without losing quality when going from HDV to DVD.....I would go for it!

Scott Francis
Mind's Eye Audio/Video Productions

It's always best to have better source material. Even if don't need HD-res, you have it on tape.
As Christopher, I also regret every single SD-project I shot with the Z1 and V1.
If you made the step, you'll never want to go back to SD. Promised! ;)
All the best!

[Chris Bowman] "Is it just a case of capturing the HD footage in a SD premiere project and then scaling it down to fit the monitor?"

That's basically what we do... sometimes.

But more often we shoot HD, edit a project in HD, and then when it's done, we scale down the master to SD.

OR... sometimes we shoot in HD (almost always 24p), then edit on a standard-def but 24fps timeline (actually 23.976), and then do a final output as NTSC (60i). At least with our system, that's the way to get a final NTSC project that still has the proper 3:2 frames/fields.

If you put HD footage on a standard def timeline, we just use a motion effect to scale it down to SD. HD footage sized at 34% gives you a letterboxed SD image. HD footage sized at 45% gives you a full-frame SD image (although you lose the sides, obviously).

As for tape, a lot of people contend that all tape is the same... and yes, you can shoot HDV on any flavor of MiniDV tape. BUT... the cost of tape stock is almost always by far the most minuscule budget item of a project... I'd guess with most of our projects the actual cost of the tape stock is probably less than one-half of one-percent of the whole project. So if I were you I'd go ahead and buy the better tape. We're not talking big money... it's literally just a couple bucks more a tape.

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Jeff Pulera] "Todd - curious why you use Motion to scale the HDV rather than "Scale to Frame Size""

Good question, Jeff... but I do it that way for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, Premiere is a little clunky with the way "Scale to Frame Size" operates. You have to remember to click that check box in "preferences" before you import any footage into the project. Sometimes our footage is mix-n-match, and we don't want all of it re-scaled... which would mean having to click and unclick and remembering what's what, etc.

Secondly, we don't always reduce our HD footage by exactly 34% when going to SD. Sometimes, not quite as much, sometimes we want to move things or frame them a little differently. In those cases it's much easier to do the SD conversion with a motion effect.

Thirdly, if you do decide you want to blow something up a little bit, if you have already imported it with "Scale to Frame Size," then you're screwed. You can't go above 100% in size with "Scale to Frame Size," or you start losing resolution... Premiere doesn't seem to retain those extra pixels when importing that way. But if you simply use motion to scale, then you do have all those extra pixels and can blow up as much as you like.

Lastly, I think it looks better. I've done side-by-side comparisons using both methods, and I think that using motion gives a slightly sharper result that scaling when importing. It could all just be in my head (and it's very minor), but in comparison using scaling seems to be just a tiny bit softer.

It doesn't take any more time or render time to do it via motion, that part is exactly the same.

Now, if you had a giant project with tons of assets and you KNEW positively that all of the pieces would be scaled down exactly the same from HD to SD, then I might use "Scale to Frame Size," but that's rarely the case here.

Obviously, you can do it either way... just a personal preference.

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Jeff Pulera] "you can always just right-click an individual clip on the timeline and uncheck Scale to Frame to work"

Yeah, that's right you can. I forgot that, I was thinking you have to re-import. I just never do it that way so I didn't think about that. I'll have to ask my other editor how he does it. It's funny how people work in different ways... he and I edit completely differently. The end result is the same, but technically how we get from point A to point B is sometimes very different.

I'd be interested to see if you can tell any quality difference. It could be all in my head...

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

HDV takes about the same amout of drive space than dv. So one hour of HDV takes about 12-13GB.

HDV-cameras are very sensitive when it comes to tapes. Best thing you can do, is to never change your type of brand. Every type of brand uses differend tape material and using different brands can cause a smear film on the video-heads. Cleaning tapes may help, but they wear out the video-heads.
I personally never use special HDV tapes, I stick to my Sony Premium DV tapes and never had any problems. They are basically the from the same material, but quality control is higher with HDV tapes.